


Mark Up

by CopperCaravan



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, Fera Shepard, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Self-Harm, Shepard Survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 20:22:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4406246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Destroy Ending; Shepard is released from the hospital, good as new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mark Up

**Author's Note:**

> Includes mentions of past canon and canon-compliant character deaths.

She’s been coated in medi-gel, scanned and prodded and wrapped in gauze. She’s been stretched and smoothed and singed and buffed. Padded, poked, prepped, and patted on the hand for her good, if drug-induced, behaviour. She’s been in and out of the operating room, on and off of pain killers, and never once out of the hospital bed. It reminds her of Cerberus. Of Lazarus. But it’s more, it’s worse, because she knows she’s here and she can’t do a damned thing about it.

And when she’s finally awake, finally up, finally out—when it’s all finally _over,_ she thinks of Cerberus again because her scars have been erased. Again. A clean face, smooth and tidy and _pretty,_ looks back at her from the mirror and she drags her fingers along the cold glass because what’s the difference between the two anyway?

After Alchera, she’d looked in the mirror every single week on the Normandy. At first, all she could see were the tiny, glowing canyons that covered her face, broke apart her cheeks and chin and temples. Signs that she wasn’t who she was—not just that she had died, not just that two years had gone on without her. It was that the evidence of her life on Mindoir and her N training and her days on Elysium and the original Normandy and that one really good bar fight had vanished from her skin. These tiny crevices, these _things_ that paraded as simple scars, whispered to her, crept around her body, told her that she wasn’t Shepard; she was someone—some _thing_ else.

And with every choice she made, every word of kindness, every familiar touch, every chance to be herself again, the tiny orange horrors were pushed away, receding into her skin like snakes burrowing into the soft soil to hide. She knew they were there, underneath, but she could feel herself there too, on the surface and deep inside. She was Shepard. She is Shepard. _She is Shepard._

And with every choice she made, every word of kindness, every familiar touch, every chance to be herself again, she made new marks to replace the old. A piling burst of tiny ridges speckled across her back and abdomen from a shotgun. Jagged lines cutting across her arms and knuckles from loops of barbed wire. A small, thin whip of a mark across her neck from a murderer’s sword. A large, thick line across her thigh from Bahak. Curves that she came to call _graceful_ sloping across her nose and under her eye—another really good bar fight.

All gone now. Again. Marks stolen from her. Evidence of who she is, of what she’s done, of all she’s protected and all she’s lost. Stolen from her.

And she hates it all. She hates the Alliance PR assholes who made this choice for her, hates the doctors and surgeons who followed through with it, hates Anderson for dying and leaving her here alone, bareskinned and unrecognizable as the solider she is. She hates the media, the reporters and their camera drones for following her out of the hospital with a scrap of fabric wrapped around her perfect face and long sleeves and pants hiding her unmarred skin. She hates Kenson. She hates Kai Leng. She hates Cerberus. She hates everyone and everything that’s ever stolen from her small allotment of happiness and left her with scars as reminders. And she hates that those scars are gone now too.

So she does it quick. And angry. And without crying or wincing or closing her eyes because that’s how she does things—how Shepard does things.

She drags the knife quick and deep across her cheeks, doesn’t stop to clean the blood until the cuts are all there, long and stinging like hell and as angry and as bold as she is.

The sharp point digging in and the bright red spilling out, rivulets dripping down like tears from the middle of her cheek to the line of her hair. Smooth lines—across and down, across and down, across and—surprising for how her hands shake.

The left side.

The first one for Ashley. For the beauty of a poet in war. For Virmire. For the time she didn’t have.

The second. One cut, one mark, one scar for 300,000 lives. It will never be enough. It will always be too much. For realizing that a soldier can never win a fight for peace.

The third for Mordin. For bravery. For him getting it right and her not getting it right enough to bring him home. For music unfinished, songs unsung for far too long.

The right side.

The forth. For Thane. For Kolyat, orphaned. For smooth movements and rough scales, full lips and heavy words and gentle hands. For goodness. For Thane.

The fifth for Legion. For his people. For the sacrifice he made and the sacrifice she wasted when she killed them all in the end anyway.

The sixth, for EDI. For her friend. For Joker. For everything EDI learned and saw and experienced. For everything she was growing into and everything she could have been.

Six new marks. Six old scars.

For Shepard’s failings. For Shepard’s people. For Shepard’s sins.

So Shepard can be Shepard. Again.


End file.
